College

Campus Life :’)

/ Srishty / 2 Comments

Hello there!

I don’t feel good about not writing here since a long time. However, this is not the only thing in my life that’s facing the wrath of procrastination, almost everything in my life is a witness to that.

I am a promise keeper though, I mentioned that I’ll do a post about my MBA campus in India before moving to Germany for the second leg of my course. I wasn’t able to write a post because the last few days in college went by super fast, before moving to Berlin, but I took lots of pictures on my last day in college, simply to save for this post. 🙂

So, here it is, MDI Gurgaon, India in all its glory. I should also mention here that campuses outside India are usually not very huge but then, I have a hundred more reasons to miss my campus life, definitely one of my most cherished times!

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That would be ‘Gurukul’, the block where all the classes and lectures happen. Gurukul is a Sanskrit/Hindi word meaning the place of the teacher where people used to go for studies in olden times, the name of this block is quite fitting!  That small pantry like canteen you see is always booming with people despite the fact that everyone hates the canteen guy in this particular canteen. After all, its the easiest way to grab a bite in the 15-minute breaks between lectures.

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This is the garden in front of the block that you just saw and some set of hostels.

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‘Change Masters’, fancy name for our mess and few hostels are also situated in this building. Since the girls hostel for my batch was a little far off, most of our time was spent in this particular building only. Oh, I miss having hearty breakfasts in the mess now! 😛

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This is the customary campus picture, if you search for images of MDI Gurgaon, you’ll find prettier and photoshop versions of this block – ‘Scholars’! I cannot say why. 😛 This block houses library, auditorium, faculty offices and other such things.

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This is the other side of Scholars and I believe that this side also deserves some love when it comes to the pictures on-line of our campus.

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I really, really miss walking on this road. It was simply perfect, taking strolls on this road. It is the main road in our campus connecting all the blocks.

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I consider myself lucky that the dual degree has given me an opportunity to have a taste of studying here in abroad, as it is an altogether different experience. However, even before coming here, I knew that nothing would be able to replicate the charm of campus life. Chilling in hostels all day long when you have so much pending work to do, going to places only because you have a discount coupon or a free Uber ride for that place, taking strolls at midnight in the campus or playing cricket ( 😀 ), checking the autowallahs right outside the campus smoking up, walking up to the tea stall right outside the campus and feeling immediately secure when you enter the campus premises after coming back from somewhere in the night. Every campus has some peculiar and fun things attached to it, one that is gloriously peculiar for MDI is ‘Jha ji’. He is a parantha (Indian stuffed flat bread) stall owner who comes to our campus only at midnight, say, from 12 am to 5 am. He probably makes the best paranthas I have tasted in my entire life, and a lot of people can vouch for that. Keeping aside the paranthas even, this guy Jha ji is so peculiar in himself. He is a super slow guy and probably a lazy one at that because he skips coming to campus many a time. Finally when he comes, the crowds outside his stall are huge in the middle of the night and due to his slow nature, people have to wait for hours to get a single parantha (no exaggeration there). Well worth the wait though. In the bone chilling Delhi winters, he reduces the frequency of his ‘campus visits’, so during that time, whenever he comes, a mail to all the batches is circulated by someone who sees him coming or whoever calls him to check whether he is coming. ‘Jha ji on campus’ is a celebration time.

Writing all this, I am now acutely aware of how much I miss the campus life. All kinds of experiences have their own charm but campus life is literally irreplaceable in the strictest sense. I wish I had lived more semesters in hostel during my engineering too because engineering life is anyway so different, a good hostel life on top of it would have been perfect. I really envy NITs & IITs people (two major engineering colleges in India) where it is almost compulsory for students to live in hostels. Not to mention that NITs & IITs have gorgeous campuses! I am sure for many of them, their engineering time was the best time of their lives. For me, it may be my post graduation time, the time that I spent in this campus! 🙂

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Life Lately | Belated Monday Mumbles 15

/ Srishty / 5 Comments

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Some of you guys wanted me to write about my B-School life and share more about my campus, but I don’t know why that never happened.

I also went through issues in my personal life and I was anyway never fond of the process of writing about personal life (so far), so probably due to that also I didn’t write anything about campus either. There’s also another big reason, a B-School life is extremely different from any other sort of campus life (or so I believe), hence it’s difficult for me to put down in words. As you may have noticed otherwise also, I am not very good at penning about my life. However, I did not want to end this year without giving a tiny peak into that. I’ll definitely try to share pictures of my campus before I move over to the second part of my degree in Europe. However, as of now, I can only tell you small bits of how it’s different, because I wish to be at peace that I didn’t end this year without writing anything about it.

The biggest difference remains of sleep. Nobody ever sleeps. Not even the people who have nothing to do. Although you will always have something to do, but my course, international management, runs faster as compared to the flagship course. In the flagship course at least, people can easily get time, still they won’t sleep and will keep chilling/partying till the wee hours. There’s the constant running around for breakfast and coffee breaks in between classes, where you get frustrated with the mess queues & what not! It’s funny how even in post graduation, you meet all sorts of people, the kinds you met in graduation, maturity in terms of age is not really necessary to be found :P. You meet the ones who cry for marks, the ones who think they are the coolest people on Earth, the ones who are actually cool and fun to be around, the anxious & scared ones, the ones who still choose to be nice after all these years of seeing this world and so on. The collective cries when a company is visiting campus and you are supposed to dress up in formals is a common phenomena and even companies don’t leave a chance to make fun of it. 😀  Its a very unique kind of a life and I am happy that I managed to live it. I wish it lasted longer, than the Europe bit at least, because there you are on your own and there’s no campus life as such.

I may not be good with words when it comes to writing about my life, but I’ll definitely try to share pictures sometime soon.

And with this last Monday Mumbles for year 2015, I usher in the New Year. May it be a very happy year for all of us! Here’s to hope, happiness & love!

🙂

Love, Srishty

What do you find repelling in the opposite gender? | Monday Mumbles 7

/ Srishty / 16 Comments

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The question is quite clear from the title itself, but what led me to ask this is a funny story that would take (at least) some of you to good old college days. 🙂 Mine are not that old okay, I am quite young. 😛

So, the question first and then my (supposedly) funny story.

Question: What is it in the opposite gender that completely puts you off? What is it that makes you simply feel repelled by a person of the opposite gender?

My answer: Well, my answer is meanness to other people. No matter how good the said person is to me, if he tries to make fun of other people who he considers weaker than him in any way, it really puts me off.

Now for the funny story, my friend and I had this celebrity-crush sort of a crush on a senior in our college. I am not sure if this qualifies as a crush because we did not like him in any other way except the fact that we found him really good looking. The last sentence seems defensive because his image was kind of notorious and we did not feel attracted to him or so! It was kind of how you crush on celebrities – so hot but don’t want them in reality (unless you’re in love with a celebrity, then this analogy won’t work 😛 ). So, yeah, we did all sorts of crazy things ranging from posing next to his bike to putting his pictures as wallpapers (LOL!!) to creep hostel mates out. Those were the glorious days! 😀 Anyway, so all through this, we did not have a good image of him in our heads but we still managed to pull all these stunts as sort of a celebrity/hot guy worship(?). However, one day we were having a lecture in which he passed a sly remark on this other guy, who I anyway used to find kind of innocent. Now, trust me, this was a very small thing and all of us do it at some point of time (or rather a lot of times) but I guess this was the moment from when the slope of hot guy craziness started going downwards for me. 😀

I was reminded of this whole thing few days back and that’s what made me ask this today, go on and tell me what puts you off in opposite gender. 🙂

If you want to share or ask something for the next Monday Mumbles, please drop me an email at srish.myblog@gmail.com.

6 (of the million) reasons why I miss college already

/ Srishty / 27 Comments

I joined my first job yesterday. If you read this post, kindly tell me honestly if you were excited about your day 1 at your first job (because I was in that phase where you tell yourself ” I wish I had had more fun in college and I wish I had more free days between college-ending & my joining date”). Come on, I hardly had a month.

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Anyway, to cut the long story short, here is my list why I miss college (or why people generally miss college):

1. If you don’t want to attend a class, you don’t attend it or sleep through it or come late according to your own convenience but we all know how that works in an office. 🙂

2. You fear a lot of things in college but when you are in a job, it is then when you realize how free you actually were in college. No responsibilities!

3. No matter how many food joints you have at your floor, there is no joy equivalent to running to the cheapest outlet around college for inexpensive food with your buddies. 🙂

4. You always have to maintain decorum at office. ( You learnt how to kill it and bury it in college, right? :P)

5. Ok, this might not be true for all of us because for one, not all get a chance to work in the same city in which their college is. This is true for me though and when my cab crosses half of Delhi, I feel nostalgic at every freaking place because I have been there with my friends. The most random of places bring back huge memories.

6. In office, you are responsible for everything that you do. You are in a college too. But back then, you couldn’t care less. 🙂

PS: My office is lovely and the building is so magnificent that I can’t put it in words how huge it is. Someone told me that it is equivalent to three football grounds. 🙂

PPS: I just realized that I have only two personal photos on my blog till date and I am wearing the same t-shirt in both. Oh, and lucky is wearing the same shirt as well in both the photos.

Sukhdev Dhaba, Murthal

/ Srishty / 16 Comments

If you live in or near Delhi-NCR region, chances are that you have heard about this place. It is truly THE place to eat if you want to know how rich, creamy, spicy north Indian food tastes like.

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Dhabas were originally eating joints built on highways to provide easy access to food to travelers  However, the taste of the authentic Indian food in Dhabas used to be so delicious that every eating joint which wanted to make an identity of serving delicious Indian food started associating the word ‘Dhaba’ with their names. And that is how we got the modern dhabas where the sitting arrangement is pretty much like today’s modest restaurants and the food is still authentic Indian.

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Some love their food with vinegar onions. :)

Some love their food with vinegar onions. 🙂

Sukhdev Dhaba is one of these modern dhabas situated on the Murthal Highway approximately 45 kms away from Delhi. A word of advice: If you are in Delhi, please please do give this place a try, you will love the amazingly D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S. food here. Since it takes a lot of time to reach here, families plan Sunday brunches to this place and youngsters plan night-outs to eat at this place. I have been here twice, once with family and very recently with my friends after our farewell party. 🙂

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One of my favorite things - BUTTER!

One of my favorite things – BUTTER!

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Some love their food with chai - day in and day out!

Some love their food with chai – day in and day out! (Not me though :P)

Now the funny part of the story: there is a reason why I have not done eating out posts before this. The reason is that as soon as my food is served at any place, I just pounce upon it and there is no time to take pictures. 😛 However, the day we went here was one of the Navratri days and I was fasting on that day (Navratri is an Indian festival of 9 days dedicated to Indian Goddesses). Hence, as my friends ate, I had all the time in the world to click pictures and I had my friend’s camera too. Now you know. 😉

PS: If any of you are interested in knowing about my camera woes, please refer to this post. 🙂

On Se Reverra

/ Srishty / Leave a comment

It means ” we will see each other again”. This is what our juniors chose to call our farewell and, I am so happy that they did. It means so much more than just bidding adieu. 🙂 This post is long due since my farewell on April 13th, 2013. I couldn’t do it earlier because of exams and everything. 😛

Farewell is a custom that juniors have to follow each year for their seniors. However, if they do it in a way which clearly shows that it means much more to them than just a custom, then you realize that it is very important to them too that you will be leaving this college soon.

Honestly, in terms of hanging out and interaction, I was more close to my seniors than my juniors. But I had a few friends from the third year batch too which I genuinely feel lucky to have. First of all, they were always so lively whenever I talked to them that it used to make my day (probably all of us tend to discuss our serious academic matters within our own batch?). They cracked the silliest of jokes and laughed at mine as well. However, the best quality of those friends of mine I am talking about still remains that they are super funny people. 😀 I remember their faces when we used to join them in group assignments and as we were in 4th year, we were more carefree towards assignments. They had a very helpless expression on their faces accompanied with “Bhaiya/ Di, do teen question aap bhi kr lo!!” (Guys, you also solve a few questions for the assignment no! :D). What was overwhelming was that they were always excited about plans even if it included just us, like trips or planning events etc. 🙂

Then, there are my junior friends from 2nd year. These people can come up with the most random of things to talk about which makes you double up with laughter! Sometimes, one of the parties involved in the conversation lose track of the topic and that is when it all becomes hilarious! I have spent very beautiful times with these people really. Oh, and they gave us goodbye notes and other such sweet things on our last day that it actually made me cry.

The funny thing is that all these people I am talking about are not people I hang out with all the time or share everything that I have to say but there are some people who are close to your heart even if you are not best friends with them. And I know that they feel the same because I have managed to make a place in their hearts too, even if it is a small place. 🙂

PS: If it is not clear from the post itself, my juniors put all the effort in the world to make the farewell party a success. Each of them had one or the other person from my batch who was very close to their heart that they had to make this day count. 🙂

PPS: There are only a very few people who are directly referenced in this post but there are a lot more of my juniors which I am going to remember ALWAYS because even if the interaction with them was limited, it was honestly a memorable part of my life here.